Natural Causes: An Inspector McLean Novel, Book 1

The unabridged, downloadable audiobook edition of James Oswald's gripping new Inspector McLean crime thriller Natural Causes, read by the actor Ian Hanmore. A young girl's mutilated body is discovered in a sealed room. Her remains are carefully arranged, in what seems to have been a cruel and macabre ritual, which appears to have taken place over 60 years ago.For newly appointed Edinburgh Detective Inspector Tony McLean this baffling cold case ought to be a low priority - but he is haunted by the young victim and her grisly death.

Stalkers

Time's up. You're Next. "All he had to do was name the woman he wanted. It was that easy. They would do all the hard work. "Detective Sergeant Mark 'Heck' Heckenburg is investigating the disappearance of 38 different women. Each one was happy and successful until they vanished without a trace. Desperate to find her missing sister, Lauren Wraxford seeks out Heck's help.

Where Roses Never Die: Varg Veum

September 1977. Mette Misvãr, a three-year-old girl, disappears without trace from the sandpit outside her home. Her tiny, close middle-class community in the tranquil suburb of Nordas is devastated, but their enquiries and the police produce nothing. Curtains twitch, suspicions are raised, but Mette is never found.

Silent Scream: Detective Kim Stone Crime Thriller, Book 1

Five figures gather 'round a shallow grave. They had all taken turns to dig. An adult-sized hole would have taken longer. An innocent life had been taken, but the pact had been made. Their secrets would be buried, bound in blood. Years later a headmistress is found brutally strangled, the first in a spate of gruesome murders that shock the Black Country.

The Night Stalker: Detective Erika Foster, Book 2

In the dead of a swelteringly hot summer's night, Detective Erika Foster is called to a murder scene. The victim, a doctor, is found suffocated in bed. His wrists are bound and his eyes bulging through a clear plastic bag tied tight over his head. A few days later, another victim is found dead in exactly the same circumstances. As Erika and her team start digging deeper, they discover a calculated serial killer - stalking their victims before choosing the right moment to strike.

A Tapping at My Door

From the best-selling author of Cry Baby, the beginning of a brilliant and gripping police procedural series set in Liverpool, perfect for fans of Peter James and Mark Billingham. A woman at home in Liverpool is disturbed by a persistent tapping at her back door. She's disturbed to discover the culprit is a raven and tries to shoo it away. Which is when the killer strikes. DS Nathan Cody, still bearing the scars of an undercover mission that went horrifyingly wrong, is put on the case.

The Cuckoo's Calling

After losing his leg to a land mine in Afghanistan, Cormoran Strike is barely scraping by as a private investigator. Then John Bristow walks through his door with an amazing story: his sister, the legendary supermodel Lula Landry, famously fell to her death a few months earlier. The police ruled it a suicide, but John refuses to believe that. The case plunges Strike into the world of multimillionaire beauties, rock-star boyfriends, and desperate designers, and it introduces him to every variety of pleasure, enticement, seduction, and delusion known to man.

The Slaughter Man

On New Year’s Day, a wealthy family is found slaughtered inside their exclusive gated community in north London, their youngest child stolen away. The murder weapon is a gun for stunning cattle, leading Detective Max Wolfe to a dusty corner of Scotland Yard’s Black Museum devoted to a killer who thirty years ago was known as the Slaughter Man. But the Slaughter Man is now old and dying. Can he really be back in the game?

The Murder Bag

Twenty years ago seven students became friends at their exclusive private school, Potter's Field. Now they have started dying in the most violent way imaginable. Detective Max Wolfe follows the bloody trail from the backstreets and bright lights of the city, to the darkest corners of the corridors of power. As the bodies pile up, Max finds he is fighting not only for justice, but for his own life....

The Sea Detective

Cal McGill is an Edinburgh-based oceanographer, environmentalist and one-of-a-kind investigator. Using his knowledge of the waves - ocean currents, prevailing winds, shipping records - McGill can track where objects came from or where they've gone. It's a skill that can help solve mysteries ranging from disappearances to murder. Two severed feet wash up on two different islands off the coast of Scotland. Forensics shows that the feet belong to the same body.

The Girl in the Ice: Detective Erika Foster Crime Thriller, Book 1

When a young boy discovers the body of a woman beneath a thick sheet of ice in a South London park, Detective Erika Foster is called in to lead the murder investigation. The victim, a beautiful young socialite, appeared to have the perfect life. Yet when Erika begins to dig deeper, she starts to connect the dots between the murder and the killings of three prostitutes, all found strangled, hands bound, and dumped in water around London.

Raven Black: Book One of the Shetland Island Quartet

It is a cold January morning, and Shetland lies beneath a deep layer of snow. Trudging home, Fran Hunter's eye is drawn to a splash of color on the frozen ground, ravens circling above. It is the strangled body of her teenage neighbor, Catherine Ross. The locals on the quiet island stubbornly focus their gaze on one man - loner and simpleton Magnus Tait.

The Blissfully Dead

When the body of a teenage girl is found in a London hotel, DI Patrick Lennon is mystified. Nobody saw her or her killer enter the hotel, and there is no apparent motive - until a second teenager is found and Lennon realises somebody is targeting fans of the world's biggest boy band.

We Shall Inherit the Wind: Varg Veum

It's 1998. Varg Veum sits by the hospital bedside of his long-term girlfriend, Karin, whose life-threatening injuries provide a deeply painful reminder of the mistakes he's made. Investigating the seemingly innocent disappearance of a wind-farm inspector, Varg Veum is thrust into one of the most challenging cases of his career, riddled with conflicts, environmental terrorism, religious fanaticism, unsolved mysteries and dubious business ethics.

Masked Ball at Broxley Manor: A Royal Spyness Novella

At the end of her first unsuccessful season out in society, Lady Georgiana has all but given up on attracting a suitable man - until she receives an invitation to a masked Halloween ball at Broxley Manor. Georgie is uncertain why she was invited, until she learns that the royal family intends to marry her off to a foreign prince, one reputed to be mad.

The Cold, Cold Ground

Adrian McKinty was born in Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland. He studied politics and philosophy at Oxford before moving to America in the early 1990s. Living first in Harlem, he found employment as a construction worker, barman, and bookstore clerk. In 2000 he moved to Denver to become a high school English teacher and it was there that he began writing fiction.

The Crossing Places

When she's not digging up bones or other ancient objects, Ruth Galloway lectures at the University of North Norfolk. She lives happily alone in a remote place called Saltmarsh overlooking the North Sea and, for company; she has her cats Flint and Sparky, and Radio 4. When a child's bones are found in the marshes near an ancient site that Ruth worked on ten years earlier, Ruth is asked to date them.

The Mermaids Singing

The bodies of four men have been discovered in the town of Bradfield. Enlisted to investigate is criminal psychologist Tony Hill. Even for a seasoned professional, the series of mutilation sex murders is unlike anything he's encountered before. But profiling the psychopath is not beyond him. Hill's own past has made him the perfect man to comprehend the killer's motives. It's also made him the perfect victim. A game has begun for the hunter and the hunted.

Publisher's Summary

Penguin presents the unabridged, downloadable, audiobook edition of Prayer for the Dead, from the best-selling Inspector McLean series by Sunday Times best-selling author James Oswald, read by Ian Hanmore.

Are you ready to be reborn? The search for a missing journalist is called off as a body is found at the scene of a carefully staged murder. In a sealed chamber, deep in the heart of Gilmerton Cove, a mysterious network of caves and passages sprawling beneath Edinburgh, the victim has undergone a macabre ritual of purification.

Inspector Tony McLean knew the dead man, and can't shake off the suspicion that there is far more to this case than meets the eye. The baffling lack of forensics at the crime scene seems impossible. But it is not the only thing about this case that McLean will find beyond belief.

Teamed with the most unlikely and unwelcome of allies, he must track down a killer driven by the darkest compulsions, who will answer only to a higher power...

I do think they need to be read in order as there are lots of references to previous stories and McLean's background.

Hope there are more and read by Ian Hanmore- he is up there in my top 2 of narrators with Sean Barrett!

9 of 11 people found this review helpful

A. Thurston

East Anglia

3/6/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"Not as good as the last three"

Beautifully narrated again by the velvet voice of Ian Hanmore. Unfortunately whilst there's nothing wrong with this book, it's not nearly as gripping or exciting as the last three. Feel a tad disappointed as I was so eagerly awaiting this title.

6 of 8 people found this review helpful

Simon

Waterlooville, UK

8/28/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"Nearly as good but not quite"

I'm a genuine fan of what James Oswald has done with this series and I think that in Ian Hanmore he has paired up with a stylish narrator perfectly suited to the stories. The characters are easy to identify with and "Grumpy Bob" never ceases to put a smile on my face. This story though didn't engage me as much as the previous ones and while still enjoyable I hope for a stronger and more gripping plot next time. Still well worth a read and while I think I can imagine why people found the whispering irritating I think it was a good touch and added the right creepy notes. A matter of taste!

5 of 7 people found this review helpful

Andromeda's Twin

UK

2/13/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"The whispering is irritating"

Firstly I was disappointed with the narration, Ian Hanmore is an excellent narrator, he has done an excellent job with most of the story but the whispered parts, where the murderer is speaking, are just irritating and rather spoilt my enjoyment of the overall book.

Secondly, I may have missed it but the fantastic supernatural elements of the first four books, seems to be missing from this one, except for Madame Rose who has her own weird thing going on. I was disappointed with this lack but enjoyed the story overall despite this.

To sum up, good story line, supernatural element is missing which will probably suit some people, Ian Hanmore does his usual excellent job except for the whispering, which is why I've only given 3 stars for the narration but this is in no way a reflection of Ian Hanmore's overall performance, he is an excellent narrator when speaking normally.

3 of 5 people found this review helpful

Kevin Blyth

3/3/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"Great story shame about whispering"

Another good story well written and narrated - know what he was trying to do with the whispering just not sure it worked.

4 of 6 people found this review helpful

Wras

Kildonan

2/14/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"Easy to like but with no surprises"

This series is like a comfortable pair of shoes, easy to like but with no surprises and there is part of the problem after five books, the one character we would like to know more about is inspector Mclean but we are fed crumbs and innuendo, by now I think we deserve a little bit more and a few more answers, or at least some plot development on the occult side of things. The X Files was like this all conspiracy but no conspirators. So I ask Where is the MEAT? When will some of the mysteries develop out of the shadow and into the plot proper and not as just insinuations?The procedural side of the story is a strong as ever and the investigation is well described and plotted, the surrounding character apart from the bosses ( who are like a parody of management and stupidity ), all appear real and likeable. All that said I read this book in two seating and enjoyed it for what it is, but I think the writer needs to give us a bit more than a formula that works, it is getting old in book 5.

4 of 6 people found this review helpful

Animal lover

Wales UK

2/13/15

Overall

Performance

Story

"Been up all night reading!¬"

What did you like most about Prayer for the Dead?

Great story, love Mr Oswalds books.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Prayer for the Dead?

I'm not saying you have to read it for yourselves!

Have you listened to any of Ian Hanmore’s other performances? How does this one compare?

Ian Hanmore is totally brilliant and yes I have listened to him on other novels, Stuart McBride for one.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

YES YES and YES

5 of 8 people found this review helpful

maddy

12/6/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"Spoilt by the over dramatic whispering"

Is there anything you would change about this book?

The whispering bits. I found them so irritating I skipped past them and obviously missed out on the storyline

What could James Oswald have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

Tied up the loose ends, eg: Madam Rose, what was going on with her, we never did find out

How could the performance have been better?

By remembering that it is a plain book narration, which is all I, for one, want. It's no to going to be played live at the Old Vic

Did Prayer for the Dead inspire you to do anything?

Apart from causing me intense irritation, it made me vow to check this author's books for future as to the involvement of the occult. I would have stopped listening but had nothing else in my library to listen to.

Any additional comments?

Personally I like a storyline that could be credible, even at a pinch, but it certainly seems there are a lot of people in Edinburgh involved in the weird occult.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Amazon Customer

Bath, United Kingdom

12/2/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"A Good Read"

Another good book but I didn't like the introduction of the killers activities or flashbacks in the audible flashbacks.

Hasn't put me off though.

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

Squibs

11/6/16

Overall

Performance

Story

"Great story"

Enjoyed the narration apart from the parts whispered. Surely the narration could have been done in a different voice rather than having to adjust the volume to cope with the lowered tone then having ears blasted when normal narration resumed. Spoiled the telling and reflects the low scores

0 of 0 people found this review helpful

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